Finance

Viewpoint: Those Who Bury History Are Doomed to Repeat It 

Ironies abound in the current mortgage mess/financial crisis. One of the most poignant, from my perspective – that’s one with over 20 years in MBS/ABS research — is the fact that, by abandoning the Great Depression as the worst-case benchmark and shifting to models based on contemporary mortgage performance, the ratings companies helped create the current house price crash and credit squeezes that are routinely compared to the Great Depression.